I love the 410!!!!

[Torquila]

nrshida, I agree.

Otherwise,

I don't know about real life, but in this game; having the rear turret adds a lot of mental safety factor and means I can force situations in which I can use it (when the opportunity arises).

My only question about this is really how easily was such a system knocked out? most of the time it is killed easier or about as easy as the rear gun on the 110G.

Which is the most frustrating thing :_(

[Karnak]

I don't know how easy it was to knock out, but if you look at diagrams of the Me410 the rear turret apparatus is very large.  If HTC modeled its "hit box" based on that it probably would explain why it is pretty easy to knock out in AH.

[Charge]

"Sorry if this offends some people's favourite plane, but I think the 410 was a terrible design solution."

That's all right. Care to elaborate why you consider 410 like that?

-C+

[nrshida]

That's all right. Care to elaborate why you consider 410 like that?

Alright but don't get all moody and defensive now, it's just an interesting discussion  


Just a bit of idle doodling from a design perspective...

It's arguable whether the rear armament is worth the weight and drag penalty in the first place (second crew member notwithstanding). I think that DeHavilland demonstrated this with the Mosquito design (better to strip that out and run with the extra speed). But if you're going to insist on having defensive armament then you'd be hard pushed to find a more convoluted solution. Splitting the weapons on either side of the fuselage ensures that you halve the armament available for any shots apart from those where the attacking aircraft is directly in the same plane as you. The whole barbette solution is essentially a remote controlled turret, mounted in ridiculous proximity to the cockpit. I don't know what the total weight of the whole assembly including control and electrical system was but I imagine it was quite a lump, hideously complex to manufacture and maintain and not really bringing an awful lot to the party over a pair of very lightweight flexible mounts, say.

With the flaps and the radiators the designers failed to take advantage of the twin engine format and basically duplicated all the disadvantages of a single liquid-cooled fighter. The Mosquito and some other designs with this format reduce drag a lot by plonking the rads in an inner split wing section. They also decided to use a low profile nacelle as it merges with the wing presumably to facilitate the plain flap format which forced them to use a rotating main leg instead of using a deeper nacelle and exploiting that for both a simplified landing gear and also a superior flap solution. Again more unnecessary complexity from a poor design decision and more weight (a common theme).

With a pair of those very powerful engines you should expect a very high speed but it's mediocre compared to its peers (you guys say), this implies a high drag shape, it's reasonably transitional in form so probably the juxtaposition of nacelles and fuselage conspire against it (in addition to the radiators etc.) to make a very poor overall aerodynamic form. This is a stark contrast to the Mosquito say which is very clean and simply 'looks right' (<-- a very good metric even in today's computer rich environment).

It very much looks like the sort of design that emerges from an overly large design team / committee perhaps with conflicting interests. It's as if different factions were all vying to have their ideas incorporated which totally removes the holistic quality of a design. Contrast this to DeHavilland's rather clean design process or even an earlier instantiation of the Messerschmitt design team itself which brings me to the final point the structure:

Old Willy did some really clever things with the design of the 109, most especially centralising stresses and making single components do more than one job, this is undoubtedly superior to the Spitfire's internal structure, for example. Lighter, stronger, easier to manufacture and maintain and scalable. These concepts were apparently abandoned for the 410 however which is back to disparate structures and distributed stress throughout, again increased weight and complexity. It's a devolution of their design philosophy.

With those engines and other components it's not a big stretch to imagine a slick design roughly equivalent to the Mosquito, essentially a twin late war 109 (as you could argue the Mosquito is a twin Spitfire). With an empty weapons bay, such a beast could have worried a lot of fighters in terms of speed, climb rate and even perhaps manoeuvrability.

Alternatively if they had been really committed to the effective rear gunner concept then they might have instead employed the Fokker G.1 format with a long and slender central nacelle and a single rear mounted and damped, manually aimed 20-mm with a coaxial sight. That would give a large field of fire including downwards, be more intuitive to aim and would be far lighter and more streamlined than the barbette approach. Another solution would have been to install a single remote controlled gun right in the arse of the tail, since you're going to all the trouble to develop a remote controlled gun you might as well locate it in a sensible position. Then you would have good reason to call it a Hornet!  

[GScholz]

Nice writeup. 

[Torquila]

I don't agree with the mosquito having the "looks right"; it never struck me like that at first. To me it looks more like a fixed wing dragon fly with tail stabs (that's why I never fly it). If anything, its just perfectly "Built right"; en contrare, to this metal monster we are discussing.

The barbettes are lacking something yes, but being in the very end of the tail makes it hard to reach the high angle of attack targets above you, so its a tradeoff somewhere. If anything; if they had added another barbette on the top of the fuselage and the bottom, to make it 4; that would of been quite the thing to see and a really effective defensive armament (you would always have atleast 2 guns to put on the target).

[bozon]

To me, gunners on a fighter is a concept that fails while still on the drawing board. What is the purpose gunners? active defense. The other form of active defense is maneuvering. Fighters rely on maneuvers as active defense. Bombers (WWII) give up all evasive maneuvers and rely entirely on massed firepower of gunners. There is very little middle ground as the two concepts conflict. Gunners are useless if their plane is maneuvering. To be able to aim and hit, their plane needs to do very little maneuvering. The installation of the guns and turrets hurt maneuverability and speed. So it is one or the other, not both.

By installing the turret system, the design team is stating that in case the 410 is attacked they expect it to do NO evasives, but instead to rely on the gunner to fend off the attacker. If there is any intention that the 410 would maneuver like a fighter, the gunner is useless and the plane is better off without it (as a gunner, not as a 2nd crew). A concept doomed to failure on a fighter.

[Torquila]

That is only if you have an absolutist way of approaching the situation, I am pretty sure you could fire your guns while manouvering because on such a plane you would first not be able to perform amazing acrobatic feats anyways (based on the FM here and not to mention the guns were fully mechanical).

But otherwise, the idea behind the german "destroyer" is at the very heart of development; the concept of an "everything" machine, which provides a pinnacle and direction for the "stem cells" of further developments and offshoots, like dedicated fighters, or bombers or interceptors.

It is not a bad idea, but it takes so much more time to get right then a specialist machine and like mentioned before, the 410 really needed more thought.

Tell ya what, if the 410 HAD those 4 barbettes here, how would you feel about approaching it?

All it takes is someone semi decent with a mouse and a well calibrated gunsite (1k,800,600,400).

[bozon]

Gunnery in AH is much easier than in RL. Aiming while maneuvering is incredibly difficult on two levels. The one is that the gunner himself is under G and being thrown around in the cockpit - in real life, back seat system operators on fighters have to be careful not to bang their heads against the canopy when the pilot surprises them with a quick roll. Operating the guns under 5G will not result in accurate aim, especially if they are hand held. Sitting backwards through twists and turns was not a pleasant experience.

The other is that gunnery off the axis of the plane is complicated. For example, shooting at the profile of a plane in your front sector requires much more lead than firing at the profile of a plane flying parallel to you at your 3 o'clock. Gunners in AH also score much poorer when you approach them from unusual angles like above and the side. Add to that the acceleration of a maneuvering plane that make bullets fly off of your aim point and gunners can hit **** like that.

[Karnak]

Tell ya what, if the 410 HAD those 4 barbettes here, how would you feel about approaching it?

I would be unconcerned with its tail guns.

[GScholz]

Let's not forget amid all this fighter talk that the 410 was also designed as a schnellbomber, and most of them served in bomber/attack/recce roles.

[nrshida]

I don't agree with the mosquito having the "looks right"; it never struck me like that at first.

You've got to think like air!  

Nowadays designers call it Biomimicry, but those pseudo raindrop shapes are also nature's solution to this kind of issue. There are lots of examples of this in design. I think there is also something else at play with the 410, Mosquito, Whirlwind and Sea Hornet etcetera, but I haven't got time to work through the sectional drawings  

Tell ya what, if the 410 HAD those 4 barbettes here, how would you feel about approaching it?

I'd feel safer. Imagine what the weight of four would to to the airframe and you'd still only be able to bring two to bear. More guns wouldn't solve it. A good indication is when you have to add extra levels of complexity to solve your problem, then it's time to re-examine your fundamental solution.

Just for the sake of argument: how do you feel approaching the top of a Ki-67? Me, I feel the need for new underpants  

[Charge]

"Alright but don't get all moody and defensive now, it's just an interesting discussion"

Thanks for a condescending start but I rarely burn my fuse over these thinks unlike some other people here.

"It's arguable whether the rear armament is worth the weight and drag penalty in the first place (second crew member notwithstanding). I think that DeHavilland demonstrated this with the Mosquito design (better to strip that out and run with the extra speed). But if you're going to insist on having defensive armament then you'd be hard pushed to find a more convoluted solution. Splitting the weapons on either side of the fuselage ensures that you halve the armament available for any shots apart from those where the attacking aircraft is directly in the same plane as you. The whole barbette solution is essentially a remote controlled turret, mounted in ridiculous proximity to the cockpit. I don't know what the total weight of the whole assembly including control and electrical system was but I imagine it was quite a lump, hideously complex to manufacture and maintain and not really bringing an awful lot to the party over a pair of very lightweight flexible mounts, say."

Arguable indeed. When we look at the design choices made to give the 410 "Hornet" its "sting" it has to be considered a very clean low drag design the only negative factor being the weight. As I already pointed out pilots rather had the rear gunner than the added performance given by 30 minutes of GM-1 endurance -and it was not a small boost!

Hideously complex? They made hideously complex "kommandogerät" to thousands of FW190s during the war, I doubt the gun system was even that complex. Also like I have pointed out I think the 410 gun barbette is almost useless in this game either due to ridiculous vibration when firing or ineffectiveness of MG131. I have lit the noses of several LA7s within 200yds without ANY effect whatsoever.

"With the flaps and the radiators the designers failed to take advantage of the twin engine format and basically duplicated all the disadvantages of a single liquid-cooled fighter. The Mosquito and some other designs with this format reduce drag a lot by plonking the rads in an inner split wing section. They also decided to use a low profile nacelle as it merges with the wing presumably to facilitate the plain flap format which forced them to use a rotating main leg instead of using a deeper nacelle and exploiting that for both a simplified landing gear and also a superior flap solution. Again more unnecessary complexity from a poor design decision and more weight (a common theme)."

Do you have any figures or explanations to offer how much superior the radiator was in the Mossie than that of standard recessed MT design? It has already been conluded that the problem with surface radiators (as in Spitty) the boundary layer makes part of the radiator ineffective and this is for the large part negated in MT recessed radiator where the boundary layer does not enter the radiator also giving the radiator smaller drag surface seen from the front. Apart from boundary layer effect negation the radiator needs a certain area to be effective and when it does what it does it always creates drag. How was this any better than that of 410? Besides first Mossies came with a small engine nacelle but more about that later.

"With a pair of those very powerful engines you should expect a very high speed but it's mediocre compared to its peers (you guys say), this implies a high drag shape, it's reasonably transitional in form so probably the juxtaposition of nacelles and fuselage conspire against it (in addition to the radiators etc.) to make a very poor overall aerodynamic form. This is a stark contrast to the Mosquito say which is very clean and simply 'looks right' (<-- a very good metric even in today's computer rich environment)."

No. One part of the problem is the wing profile used which is NACA 23018, an 18% thickness profile which gives the wing good lift qualities even in low speed and high start weight. Up high where the drag is lower the wing is too small (except when the armament is light) so the induced drag is also high but as it happens the FTH of DB603 is around 20k so at that height the aircraft should perform pretty well. As there is plenty of PS available and a thick wing +slats you would expect the manuverability to be pretty good at large AoA. Well, according to Mosq's chart this is not so in Allies High. You can also compare the lift qualities to, say, Tiffie, Hurricane and BW which all have a thick airfoil to get a grip what qualities a thick wing has -yet 410 handling radically differs from these aircraft even if it has slats and the other examples do not.

Me410 also has a large rudder when compared to that of Mossie yet of those two the Mossie is more stable in slow flight, even if they had to make the engine nacelles longer due to stability issues after the intial patch of Mossies AND it had a 13% wing profile without slats! Mossie gets another free lunch there.

410 compresses after 400 mph. Where did that come from? In 410s life early on the field considered the dive brakes to be useless and suggested removing them totally from the design to speed up the production. This was not done even later on in majority of the new planes. If the 410, plane capable of divebombing, had a serious problem with compression would the field units suggest the removal of dive brakes? Add that to Mossie's free lunches.

"It very much looks like the sort of design that emerges from an overly large design team / committee perhaps with conflicting interests. It's as if different factions were all vying to have their ideas incorporated which totally removes the holistic quality of a design. Contrast this to DeHavilland's rather clean design process or even an earlier instantiation of the Messerschmitt design team itself which brings me to the final point the structure:"

According to history of 410 that is not how it happened. However there were other, some more competent, designs around the same time so 410 design did have potent competition. Why 410 won then? Maybe it was due to old Willy's good relations to Nazi party?

These aircraft, 410/Mossie, also have a different philosophy behind their designs. Me 410 is a light bomber, dive bomber and a "heavy zerstörer" to be used against bombers. Mossie was used as a light bomber and an attack aircraft (despite the liquid cooled engines) and later on as a (night) fighter and intruder.

All in all while I'm happy that 410 is finally in this game I think the way it is modelled gives a false idea what was the actual potential of the design.

-C+

PS. Almost forgot:  

[nrshida]

Thanks for a condescending start

 

If you feel the AH 410 is modelled incorrectly you should probably submit a case to HTC. I'm only generalistically discussing design decisions and features of the real aircraft.

When we look at the design choices made to give the 410 "Hornet" its "sting" it has to be considered a very clean low drag design the only negative factor being the weight.

True the barbettes are reasonably sleek, but the extra weight must be borne by the wings which causes more induced drag. This is what I mean with holistic design, everything is connected as a single entity.

Hideously complex?

Alright, uneccesarily complex then. What does it practically bring to the party over a decent balanced and damped flexible mount?

Do you have any figures or explanations to offer how much superior the radiator was in the Mossie than that of standard recessed MT design?

No I'm afraid no figures, you'll have to work those out for yourself. I think if we apply lateral thinking we can say with some confidence however that surface radiators were a good deal more 'draggy' for the reason you mentioned. We know how much better the Mustang's radiator intake is just because it avoids this effect. I think the recessed radiators are a lot closer to this than to surface rads.

No. One part of the problem is the wing profile used which is NACA 23018, an 18% thickness profile which gives the wing good lift qualities even in low speed and high start weight.

Okay, so it has a dubious selection of wing as well. 

Me410 also has a large rudder when compared to that of Mossie yet of those two the Mossie is more stable in slow flight, even if they had to make the engine nacelles longer due to stability issues after the intial patch of Mossies AND it had a 13% wing profile without slats! Mossie gets another free lunch there.

I think you're stretching your logic there. The Mosquito could simply have been a superior shape and solution (with the longer nacelles). A larger airframe is usually more docile than a smaller one. The Me410 might have missed out on this simply because it was a poor shape. The handling was always an issue I thought. The large vert stab was needed to control lateral stability problems wasn't it? Then there's the asymetrically deploying slats on top of that. A problem which they knew about in the mid 30s already?

According to history of 410 that is not how it happened. However there were other, some more competent, designs around the same time so 410 design did have potent competition. Why 410 won then? Maybe it was due to old Willy's good relations to Nazi party?

You are no doubt right, I'm not a buff on the 410, but the design gives that impression.

These aircraft, 410/Mossie, also have a different philosophy behind their designs. Me 410 is a light bomber, dive bomber and a "heavy zerstörer" to be used against bombers. Mossie was used as a light bomber and an attack aircraft (despite the liquid cooled engines) and later on as a (night) fighter and intruder.

There's sufficient similarity to draw a comparison. The roles of both changed during use.

All in all while I'm happy that 410 is finally in this game I think the way it is modelled gives a false idea what was the actual potential of the design.

I'm sorry to disagree with you, I think the design was a dubious iteration of an already problematic design. It was overcomplex, overweight and replete with poor design decisions.


If you enjoy flying it in the game then more power to you 

 

[Zoney]

Your "personal affection" to any particular plane does not aid in it's effectiveness.  You get what you get.  It is up to you to figure out the aircrafts idiosyncrasies and how those idiosyncrasies affect how you can use the aircraft.

You have the benefit of trying many many things many times without actually dying and losing all the information you have gained.  With a well thought out approach, and practice you may actually be able to obtain better results than what "history" documented for the aircraft.